[2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice EleRaider - Viable for Everything

I added a new secion to the top post: Dealing with specific bosses. So far it has tips for the two elemental reflect bosses (Core Shav and the Waterways boss) and the three Uber encounters. Post here if you are having trouble with other bosses.

I finally got to do some Uber with the latest version of the build. The regular Atziri has been completely trivial even before 2.2, it's hard to see any difference until you try Uber.

The Vaals are almost trivial now, slowing them down with Temporal Chains gives you more time to cast Icestorm while they are going through the add spawning sequence and removes the one real danger of that fight: getting Smash'd by the enraged Vaal. It moves slowly now even when enraged. The Trio is also simplier now with TC and Fortify, although you still can't reliably facetank the flame guy when he's on fire (I tried, but got about 50% success rate and it's not worth the risk; just dodge him when he's on fire and kill him when he cools down).

However, Uber Atziri herself was a disappointment. That fight turned out to be the sole exception from the overall feeling of awesomeness after upgrading to tri-curse/Fortify.

First thing that happened after trying this fight with tri-curse was me getting 1-shot by the small Flameblasts that were only hitting for about 4k in the past. Temporal Chains make Atziri/statue channel Flameblast longer, which increases its radius and greatly empowers it (110% MORE damage for each new stage). So then they are not really easier to dodge (slower but inc radius; and have to cure yourself of TC often) but much more deadly. Bad idea! Which means we have to take out TC and don't need the 3rd curse. Which in turn means that it's better to swap Doedre's Damning for another Perandus Signet (or some other good ring). May as well swap Auxium for a fire Doryani's Invitation since there is no cold damage here.

Also, it turned out that Leap Slam misses Atziri way too often and you cannot get Fortify reliably. She has Unwavering Stance, meaning that she can't Evade attacks. But apparently she either has a high Dodge stat or you need a lot of Accuracy to land a hit on her even without her being able to Evade. Either way, Leap Slam is a waste of time against Atziri and you'll be better off just casting more Icestorm instead.

Overall, against this one encounter, the tri-curse version of the build doesn't work and you just use dual-curse like before, with a small added benefit of Culling Strike. Oh well. Tri-curse is totally awesome against everything else in PoE, and if you specialize in farming Uber you probably use a different build for it anyway. Uber is too special.

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Stone__Cold wrote:

I'm 100% sure after reaching a decent level also Uber won´t be a problem at all.

I wouldn't be so sure. ;) Uber is very, VERY different. Let me know how it goes for you.

I didn't go CI on lv33 and had about 700 life and 600 shield in act 4 normal, and it's still impossible for me to face tank everything. The shield constantly went out, I suspect that I will get raped by strong enemies if I picked CI.

Also, to get most shield while levelling, you cannot have that many red socket without wasting some currencies on very low level gear.
eg. cannot get leap slam - faster attack - fortify, that is a 3-link off colour, immotal call+ cast when damage taken is also hard， thinking changing my boots to a armour based one

Is it viable to use Pyre ring, instead of Avatar of Fire and Cold to Fire? We could free up 2 passive points and use a more powerful support gem.

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zyyskkk wrote:

I didn't go CI on lv33 and had about 700 life and 600 shield in act 4 normal, and it's still impossible for me to face tank everything. The shield constantly went out, I suspect that I will get raped by strong enemies if I picked CI.

The main defense of this build is ES leech. Without CI you have limited yourself to 600 ES which is of course too little. Playing a hybrid is harder than playing CI with this build (properly). See the Troubleshooting section and make sure you are leeching.

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zyyskkk wrote:

Also, to get most shield while levelling, you cannot have that many red socket without wasting some currencies on very low level gear.
eg. cannot get leap slam - faster attack - fortify, that is a 3-link off colour, immotal call+ cast when damage taken is also hard， thinking changing my boots to a armour based one

You don't need the full high level gem setup while leveling. Getting two red sockets isn't hard, so just put CWDT+IC in something and don't worry about getting the more expensive color setups until later.

Fortify is also a higher level defense. You can put the Leap Slam link into Black Sun Crest at lv 51. Don't spend too many chromatics at lower levels unless you have a ton of them already.

There are some cheaper alternative coloring options in the Links section. The body armor can be used to solve most of the coloring issues while leveling. You can get 3 off-color sockets in a body armor easily and place the Leap Slam or CWDT links there until you are ready to wear your end game items.

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alivahit wrote:

Is it viable to use Pyre ring, instead of Avatar of Fire and Cold to Fire? We could free up 2 passive points and use a more powerful support gem.

Pyre would have to replace a Perandus Signet, resulting in a massive loss of Int (e.g. ES and damage). You'd lose a lot more than 2 points can gain. I don't know which support gem could give us that much more either. We already use all good support gems.

I have Skyforth boots, so I don't need Unwavering Stance anymore. Where should I use those extra skill points?

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alivahit wrote:

I have Skyforth boots, so I don't need Unwavering Stance anymore. Where should I use those extra skill points?

It should be noted that Skyforth doesn't replace US completely and does not give you stun immunity. You can still get stunned a lot and possibly even stunlocked by the enemies that produce a lot of physical hits per second (such as machine gunner packs or some Perandus packs). But most of the time it's fine.

If you use Skyforth, you don't need the south-west branch of our tree and can take these things instead (assuming that you already have all the regular jewel sockets):

a) Jewel socket south-east of the start (Fertile Mind) and replace Brute Force with Fertile Mind in the socket below the start. This is good because those two jewels' areas intersect over two Dex nodes converting them twice. And you convert the previously wasted Dex node there, i.e. your gain is +30 Int.

b) Primal Spirit. It's a good target that's not reachable without Skyforth.

How is the Jewel Socket south-east of the start better than the jewel-sockets on the top tree of the Witch?

They also take 4 points (with the 30 STR/Dex node), and they give 8% Mana or Elemental Damage + 30 Int, and not just 30 Int like the south-east socket.

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How is the Jewel Socket south-east of the start better than the jewel-sockets on the top tree of the Witch?

They also take 4 points (with the 30 STR/Dex node), and they give 8% Mana or Elemental Damage + 30 Int, and not just 30 Int like the south-east socket.

The socket SE from the start gives a lot more than 30 Int, I just meant that switching to it when you have Skyforth is 30 Int better overall than the original pathing.

The actual value of that particular socket is 64 Int (24 from Fertile Mind and 4 Dex nodes converted) for the price of 4 nodes. The nodes at the NW and NE edges of the Witch area combined with a nearby +30 stat node to convert give you 54 Int for the price of the same 4 nodes. 8% mana is completely useless here. 8% increased elemental damage is less useful than 10 Int. You get less damage from them (10 Int is better than 9% increased damage) and you don't get any ES.

You can compare the actual effect of taking those nodes on your character. It only costs 4 Regrets to try each of them and see how much your Icestorm damage and ES changes. I checked all those possibilities for my char to see what's worth taking after lv 94. The difference is pretty small in the big picture, but there is always something better than those NW/NE Witch sockets.

Alright, I didn't take into account that it also reaches and converts the upper Dex-node.

Well, in that case the +10INT is obviously the clear winner here. :S